On Thanksgiving and Christmas, my parents always took my brother and me to my grandparents’ house for a big family meal with my aunts and cousins.

Looking back, I suppose I took those holiday gatherings for granted. I always knew that giant spread of food would be there.

I was fortunate in that every year, my family could provide a large turkey or ham, complete with the side dishes that were a tradition in our family – stuffing, sweet potatoes with the little marshmallows melted on top, and homemade mashed potatoes.

For so many children in the families served by the St. Louis Area Foodbank, there is no guaranteed holiday meal. These children cannot be sure there will be enough food in the house on a daily basis, and holidays are no exception.

As the holidays roll around, we here at the Foodbank do what we can to ensure that at the very least, families in need have a good meal. We distribute holiday chickens to as many families as possible, and try to provide the foods that help make a traditional holiday meal.

At this time of year, many of us wonder what we can do to help our fellow man. We welcome volunteers here at the Foodbank five days a week, and encourage anyone who wants to help to host a food drive.

If you’re looking for a way to feed families in need, here are some suggested items that are great to donate around the holidays. After all, every child deserves a holiday full of good memories.

If a family or individual wants to donate a fresh or frozen turkey or ham, or other perishable items, the Foodbank will accept them here at our facility at 70 Corporate Woods Drive in Bridgeton. From here, they will be distributed to families in need.

Bethany Prange is the communications coordinator at the St. Louis Area Foodbank

Casey Milton is the product donations coordinator at the St. Louis Area Foodbank

The food collected during Scouting for Food is distributed to our network of food pantries in Missouri, covering 14 counties. The food brought in by the scouts this Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012, will start going out to our partner agencies just two days later on Monday, Nov. 19.

We truly appreciate every individual who makes the effort to put out donations. Without you, we couldn’t provide such a high quality of food assistance to our families in need.

Looking back on my childhood, I wish I would have had more opportunities to give back to my community.

I grew up in a small town where we had one elementary school, two middle schools and one high school. My parents went to church and I was involved in youth groups, but I can only remember one time volunteering at a pantry. One time…in 13 years of public school.

Maybe my mind is a little foggier than I would like to admit, but I just don’t remember anyone suggesting I help out with food drives or volunteer for a cause.

Thankfully, that doesn’t seem to be the case here in St. Louis. Working at the Foodbank, I get to see kids from all walks of life giving back to those who are less fortunate.

Whether they’re from a school, a scout group or a church youth group, they all have one thing in common. At an early age, they’re experiencing the joy that comes with helping those in need.

It’s an important lesson to learn, particularly when you think about the fact that children under 18 make up the largest percentage of those receiving assistance from the St. Louis Area Foodbank.

That’s what makes a food drive like the “Lend A CAN” drive so great. It gets kids involved at an early age in the fight against hunger.

The “Lend A CAN” food drive is a collaboration between Del Monte and Shop ‘n Save that benefits the Foodbank and the 57,000 people that we serve each week.

The best part is that while schools are giving back to the community, Del Monte and Shop ‘n Save are giving back to the schools.

The school that collects the most food by the end of October will win $2,500 and five runners-up will win $1,000. That’s money that can be put towards books, technology or any other needs.

It’s easy to sign up and it can all be done online! Once you register, the Foodbank handles the rest of the details. We’ll deliver logoed barrels to the school and pick them up once your drive is completed.

We will gladly accept any non-perishable food items, but if you purchase 10 Del Monte products from Shop ‘n Save and mail in your receipt, you will receive a $5 Shop ‘n Save gift card in return.

Volunteers from local Save-A-Lot stores bag up corn to be distributed during a recent Mobile Market / Photo by Bethany Prange

By the time the St. Louis Area Foodbank arrived in Moline Acres on Wednesday, a line of cars had already wound its way through a nearby parking lot.

Dozens of families in need waited patiently in those cars as Foodbank staff and volunteers from Good News Baptist Church in Jennings unloaded nearly 16,000 pounds of food.

As pallets of fresh cucumbers, onions, potatoes and carrots were unloaded into the parking lot of Gram Slam Storage, a group of volunteers from Save-A-Lot arrived to help.

For an hour, volunteers rebagged thousands of pounds of fresh produce so that each family in need could get their fair share.

Deacon Arstell Jones of Good News Baptist Church Food Pantry had alerted his pantry clients to let them know about this mobile market. The families, many with children, were anxious to accept the much-needed food.

Over the course of two hours, the Save-A-Lot and Good News Baptist Church volunteers loaded cars with bags of fresh sweet corn, sweet potatoes, grapes, meat and more. Save-A-Lot employees also handed out coupons for food in their stores.

By mid-afternoon, nearly 200 families had received food.

The St. Louis Area Foodbank hosts mobile markets in a different community almost every day. This program helps us distribute fresh produce, meat and veggies to people in need as quickly as possible.

The mobile market held September 19, 2012 was a particularly meaningful event. Save-A-Lot volunteers worked alongside pantry volunteers in the first of an ongoing effort from the company.

Save-A-Lot will not only be giving their employees a chance to volunteer at Foodbank events, but the company is also making a $20,000 donation to hunger relief in the bi-state region, specifically through the mobile market program at the Foodbank.

On behalf of the more than 57,100 people we serve every week, we offer our thanks to Save-A-Lot and all our volunteers.

Bethany Prange is the communications coordinator at the St. Louis Area Foodbank

Photo courtesy of Feeding America

Even though he was pretty scrawny until high school football came around, that kid could eat his body weight in food.

My mom was constantly amazed at how quickly an entire pantry full of food would disappear.

She bought in bulk and we regularly went to restaurants that offered buffets because that was the only way to keep my brother full.

Clearly, he was a growing boy. He wound up being over six feet tall.

It appears he got his massive appetite honest. My mom frequently recalls the time she first cooked for my dad’s family. She swears she cooked 10 pounds of mashed potatoes for his crew of six nephews, and it didn’t even make it around the dinner table once!

Luckily for us, my family had the ability to pay for enough food to keep all our big eaters fed.

When I think of how much extra food my parents had to buy to feed us three meals a day in the summer, I often wonder how a low-income family could possibly do it.

Families who rely on the free or reduced school lunch program during the school year are often barely able to provide their kids one meal a day. In the state of Missouri, over 40% of children utilize school lunches.

When summer hits, these families must make huge sacrifices to give their “growing kids” the basics of three meals a day. Some parents skip meals themselves to make sure their kids eat while some skimp on other necessities to buy food. Others are forced to turn to agencies like the St. Louis Area Foodbank.

Since this event started, the food drive has collected more than $7,600 and 24,800 pound of food items; enabling the Foodbank to distribute over 48,000 meals to our area’s needy families.

In the heat of the summer, this food drive helps the Foodbank keep up with higher demand.

But without support from you – a member of our community – none of this would be possible. Here’s how you can help local families in need this summer:

Host a food and funds drive at your business, church or home.

Donate any non-perishable items at any of the Fresh 102.5 live broadcast events:
o 12 to 2 p.m. Tuesday, July 24 at the Central West End Straub’s
o 4 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, July 25 at the Clayton Straub’s
o 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday, July 26 at the Town & Country Straub’s
o 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, July 29 at the Webster Groves Straub’s

Encourage your co-workers to work together for a great cause! You can register your workplace today to contribute a group donation of at least 102 canned food items for pick-up. Fill out the form here and Fresh 102.5 will contact you within one week to set up a convenient pick-up time for your office.

Bring out your holiday generosity early and help keep a child from going hungry for the rest of the summer.

Bethany Prange is the communications coordinator at the St. Louis Area Foodbank

Casey Milton is the product donations coordinator at the St. Louis Area Foodbank

If you walked through the Volunteer Center at the St. Louis Area Foodbank today, you’d see boxes flying through the air and cans sliding across metal tables.

Volunteers are busily sorting every type of food imaginable, from macaroni and cheese to grape juice.

It’s a flurry of activity.

This buzz of excitement is the midway stage for the food collected last Saturday, May 12, 2012 during the national Stamp Out Hunger food drive.

Soon, the very food being sorted at the Foodbank today will be put into the hands of families in need, right here in the bi-state region.

These families rely on the food collected at major food drives like Stamp Out Hunger, also known as the Letter Carrier food drive.

Stamp Out Hunger, now in its’ 20th year, required a massive coordination of volunteers, staff and donors. It’s the collaboration of hundreds of individuals that make these major food drives a success, year after year.

And in the St. Louis region, we couldn’t be more proud of the generous and enthusiastic people who came together to collect, sort and deliver the food.

So far, the results are astounding – our preliminary results show 196,175 pounds of food collected in St. Louis city and county alone!

At many of the St. Louis Area Foodbank’s hub sites – post offices where Foodbank staff and volunteers are stationed to sort food as it comes in – we saw some great moments of generosity.

At the Affton Post Office, two volunteers drove all the way from Collinsville, Ill. These amazing volunteers served as route workers, meaning they used their own cars to follow the letter carriers along their routes in Affton to help pick up food.

“I felt that was going above and beyond,” says Casey Milton, product donations coordinator for the St. Louis Area Foodbank. “They said, ‘we wanted to do something.’ Since there was nothing closer to home they chose Affton.”

At the South County Post Office, several letter carriers returned from their routes and jumped in to volunteer.
“Even though they put in extra time and effort collecting and loading heavy bags of canned goods along their routes, they still volunteered their time afterwards to helping us sort the food,” says Bethany Prange, Foodbank communications coordinator. “That showed commitment to the cause.”

Staff and volunteers from Foodbank partner agencies, which include food pantries, shelters and soup kitchens throughout the bi-state region, also volunteered their Saturday to sorting hundreds of cans and boxes of food!

Without the hard work of each individual who contributed to the effort, Stamp Out Hunger would not be the successful food drive it remains year after year.

Even more, this food drive could not exist without the generosity of residents who faithfully put out their donations for the letter carriers to collect.

Foodbank employee Kate Hartman carries a bin of food brought back to the post office by route volunteers / Photo by Bethany Prange

Calling all volunteers! Calling all volunteers! We need your help!

Stamp Out Hunger, the annual National Letter Carrier’s Food Drive, is Saturday, May 12, 2012, and we still need volunteers!

This is no ordinary volunteer gig! For one day, you will be helping to feed the thousands of individuals struggling with food insecurity in the bi-state region. Plus, you will be performing a great service for your local U.S. Postal Service letter carriers.

Many people don’t realize that during Stamp Out Hunger, it is solely up to the letter carriers to pick up the donated foods left on porches and next to mail boxes across the country. As you can imagine, this amounts to thousands upon thousands of pounds of food that need to be lifted and carried to mail trucks up and down the streets of our cities and towns.

Our letter carriers generously donate their time and energy to picking up the donated food, but would certainly appreciate any extra “hands for helping.” In the immediate St. Louis metro region alone, the St. Louis Area Foodbank has several locations where you can donate a few hours of your time to this project.

Now, we know this work sounds hard. It is. But it is also a lot of fun and very rewarding – you get to see tangible results of your work. You’ll be picking up and sorting food donated by your fellow St. Louisans and helping it get to the Foodbank, where it will go straight to those who need it most.

As an added bonus, you’ll receive a free t-shirt and lunch!

On May 12, we have openings for both route and dock workers.

Route volunteers duties:

• Follow the mail carrier to the beginning of their mail route and park your vehicle

• Walk up and down the designated streets of the mail route, collecting the bags of food

• Carry the bags of donated food back to the carrier’s mail truck

• Walk neighborhood streets, looking for signs of donated food on porches, in paper or plastic bags and/or hanging from their mailboxes.

The route volunteers are essential in lighting the load on our letter carriers.

“By having a volunteer pick up donated food from customers takes a huge weight off our letter carriers shoulders and is deeply appreciated,” says Bob Rapisardo, Vice President/Financial Secretary of the National Association of Letter Carriers – Branch 343.

In addition to the route volunteers, we also need dock workers. At each designated Post Office location, the letter carriers rely on these volunteers to quickly unload and sort the food.

Dock worker duties:

• Choose a Post Office location and meet there at the designated time

• Unload bags of food being dropped off at the loading docks by the Letter Carriers

• Sort and load the food into large cardboard boxes that will then be transported by Foodbank drivers

Even if you are unable to volunteer on May 12, you can still help by placing a bag of non-perishable food items around your mail box. Once the food is picked up from the houses it is taken back to a nearby postal site, sorted and loaded on to a Foodbank vehicle.

The food will be distributed to our partner agencies – food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters – on Monday morning! The community is one of the major factors in making this food drive a success. So please get involved and give back to your neighbors in need!

Casey Milton is the food donations coordinator at the St. Louis Area Foodbank

Two area bikers show up for the Bikers for Backpacks event at the St. Louis Area Foodbank / Photo by Bethany Prange

The first Bikers for Backpacks Ride for St. Louis Area Foodbank was a huge success thanks to the wonderful people who showed up to ride, donate or volunteer their time.
Although Friday was cold and rainy, Mother Nature smiled on us on Saturday, shining down with sunny skies and only a slight chill in the air. When we set up our registration table in the Foodbank’s back parking lot, we weren’t quite sure how many motorcycles we’d see that day.

But from 9 to 10 a.m., a steady stream of riders followed the curve of Corporate Woods Drive, steering their motorcycles onto the lot. Before long, the Foodbank parking lot looked like a bike show, with dozens of motorcycles on display.

Before we left our parking lot at 10:30 a.m., we counted 41 motorcycles of various designs, styles and colors. The best part was, the riders seemed to have really enjoyed finding a backpack that either matched – or contradicted – their bikes.

One biker dressed in leathers wore a menacing gray and black skull bandana on his face. He paired it with a bright pink Hello Kitty backpack stuffed with kid-friendly food donations.

Then there were leather-clad cyclists carrying red and blue Spiderman backpacks, boxes of Kool-Aid and even pink and purple backpacks filled with donations.

The highlight was a mystery rider who showed up in full motorcycle gear, but rode a bicycle! He pedaled up to the starting point with a backpack filled with food and claimed he would be getting a head start. Somehow he managed to make every stop on his bicycle. Hmmm?

After leaving the Foodbank, the riders made stops at several establishments before ending later in the afternoon at the Hawg Pit restaurant in Grafton.

Each rider made a monetary donation or brought a backpack filled with kid-friendly food items for the St. Louis Area Foodbank. The Foodbank provides meals to 261,000 people a year in 26 counties in Missouri and Illinois. Of those individuals, 39% are children under the age of 18.

In all, the first Bikers for Backpacks Ride raised $1,000 in cash donations and brought in 49 backpacks filled with 839 pounds of easy-access, nutritional, kid-friendly food.

Helmets off to everyone who made donations, including Mary Beth Bergfeld and her group from UPS who donated 136 pounds and $25 to the ride!

All the food donations will be packed by volunteers and distributed over the next few weeks. In all, the food and funds donated during the ride equal about 4605 meals for hungry kids!

Keep your eyes and ears open for the 2013 ride and pass the word on to your friends.

Thank you so much for your kindness and generosity. And please WATCH FOR MOTORCYCLES ON THE ROADS!

Ride safely!

Trish Jenner is a volunteer coordinator at the St. Louis Area Foodbank

St. Louis Area Foodbank Communications Coordinator, Ryan Farmer, takes the band Edens Edge on a tour of the Foodbank / Photo by Bethany Prange

If you haven’t yet heard of rising country music group Edens Edge, you will soon.

The trio will be opening for Rascal Flatts on tour this summer, and their self-titled album is available on Itunes. Their song “Amen” and accompanying video is a modern country hit in the making.

But if you need one more reason to love this group of talented young musicians…

Yesterday, the members of Edens Edge – Hannah Blaylock, Dean Berner, and Cherrill Green – joined enthusiastic volunteers from Sam’s Club to pack boxes and load food donations onto a truck bound for St. Louis Area Foodbank.

Edens Edge came to St. Louis to help Sam’s Club and General Mills promote their new hunger relief campaign, Outnumber Hunger.

When St. Louis area residents purchase General Mills products and enter a code on the back at www.outnumberhunger.com, Feeding America is able to purchase five meals for St. Louis Area Foodbank!

While visiting St. Louis, Hannah, Dean and Cherrill came to the Foodbank to help unload the truck of food donations. They took a tour of the Foodbank and were eager to learn how to help families struggling with hunger in the bi-state region.

Thank you to Edens Edge, Big Machine Label Group, General Mills, Sam’s Club and Feeding America for helping feed people in need.

Bethany Prange is the Communications Coordinator for the St. Louis Area Foodbank